Introducing Bing Ads and the Yahoo! Bing Network

While football fans were celebrating the first games of the 2012 NFL season, Microsoft was making headlines by announcing Bing Ads as the new name for Microsoft Advertising adCenter. The new name and some of their recently released improvements are all part of a concerted effort by Microsoft to improve the paid search experience of managing and optimizing Bing Ads campaigns.

In the spirit of name changing, Microsoft also introduced the Yahoo! Bing Network, which is defined by the combined search marketplaces of Yahoo! Search, Bing, and their partner sites. This announcement shouldn’t be too surprising as most search marketers already refer to the publisher and network as Yahoo! Bing. However, my guess is that consumers will continue to refer to each search engine separately as Bing and Yahoo!

Though Bing Ads simplifies a name that is consistently used inconsistently, I think the adverse effects of this change from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective will likely be felt. In other words, we’ll have to see how this change affects the way we find adCenter…excuse me Bing Ads…related best practices and industry news. Leave a comment or follow us on Twitter (@MarinSoftware) and let us know what you think of these changes.